TO MARKET, TO MARKET...

William Appleman Williams: Premier New Left Revisionist (Joseph R. Stromberg, November 16, 1999, Anti-War)

The central focus of Williams' work, beginning with the essays which foreshadowed his Tragedy of American Diplomacy, was how some Americans' understanding of the role of the frontier in US history contributed to a foreign policy of overseas empire. Here, the emphasis is so much on ideas and interpretations of history that "economic determinism" recedes to rather un-Marxist dimensions. Of course, the ideas of the individuals and elites in question aimed at dealing with felt economic crises. Like the men of 1898, whom he was criticizing, Williams believed that the crisis was built into the market economy. They chose the path of domestic corporatism and overseas expansion (Open Door empire). Charles Beard, who shared the same critique of capitalism, sought to square the circle with a program of non-aggressive "continentalist" corporatism. Williams chose to reject the empire in the name of "decentralized socialism."

Williams believed that the men who brought America into the Spanish-American War had a well-developed Weltanschauung, or "world-outlook," based on a particular reading of American frontier history. This reading owed much to Frederick Jackson Turner's famous "frontier thesis." The existence of a moving frontier of contiguous land for over two centuries had accustomed Americans to a certain level of prosperity and individual freedom. With the "closing" of the frontier in the 1890s, some new means must be found to prevent the economy from running down - a fear underlined by the Panic of 1893. To members of the northeastern elite it seemed obvious that a neo-mercantilist foreign policy in pursuit of ever-new foreign markets answered the case.

This "solution" to the perceived problem was soon repackaged as the Open Door - unlimited access of US companies to markets everywhere, to be achieved, where necessary, by political and military pressure on foreign states, peoples, and revolutionary movements (where they existed). The frontier-expansionist theory of history and the Open Door underlay US foreign policy from 1898 on. Disagreements - within policy-making circles, at least - took place within that framework and dealt with such details as tactics, timing, cost, and so on. Thus, from 1898 to Vietnam and beyond, there had never been a real debate on the purposes and bases of US foreign policy. And, of course, the "problem" the elites claimed to be solving was itself misconceived at several steps in the argument. And, here, we need to go beyond Williams' analysis and integrate his historical materials with the insights of Austrian economic theory. [...]

By writing the story of the American establishment's long-standing interest in, and obsession with, foreign markets, Williams provided us with one of the keys to understanding the origins and growth of the American empire. By his stalwart example of opposition to the empire and its works he inspires us all. This achievement, embodied in the many books he left us, makes it easy to forgive him his misunderstanding - as some of us see it - of the market economy and his resulting conviction that socialism provided a viable alternative to empire. In our time, mainstream scholars, whatever the inane radicalism of their views on domestic policy, glide along blissfully unaware of the empire or in active support of it (as we saw recently). As for the so-called "radicals," many of them imagine themselves critics of empire because they add "US imperialism" to their long checklist of ills to be dealt with by complete destruction of existing American society and its replacement by an envy-driven egalitarian bellum omnium contra omnes. In such times, it is a help to recall a radical scholar who was an American opponent of an empire which merely wears the American label.

It's revealing that this former radical Leftist--whom Friend Harry mentioned the other day--is now beloved by the anti-war libertarian crowd. We're just as credulous as anyone else, but the notion that we fought the Vietnam War to open up foreign markets seems to verge on lunacy.


MORE:
-ESSAY: The Choice Before Us (William Appleman Williams, July 1957, The American Socialist)
-ESSAY: Where is the Excitement these Days?: William Appleman Williams, The History of the Marginalized and the Periodization of American Capitalism (Michael Dobe, Rutgers University)
-ESSAY: William Appleman Williams and the Myth of Economic Determinism (Steven Hurst, APG Conference)
-ARCHIVES: "William Appleman Williams" (Find Articles) Posted by Orrin Judd at July 5, 2003 11:49 AM